Arthur Lee Whitfield, 49, smiles
as
he listens to his niece LaVon Brown, 28, right, tell him what it was
like to see him for the first time in 16 years. Whitfield was released
from prison after DNA evidence exonerated him in two rape
cases. He was imprisoned 22 years.

Arthur
Lee Whitfield spent part of his first hours of freedom standing up on
the bus that carried him home.

Whitfield
was released from prison Monday after DNA tests exonerated him of
raping two women in Ghent in August 1981.

He had
served 22 years of a 63-year sentence.

“I’ve been
waiting
for so long,” Whitfield said Tuesday in his attorney’s office. “Last
Friday was 23 years exactly since this all began. … I did a lot of
praying. I didn’t lose hope.”

Whitfield
always had
maintained his innocence, but a jury sentenced him to 45 years in
prison for one of the rapes, based in part on the victims’
identification of him. Whitfield pleaded guilty to the second rape
charge in exchange for an 18-year sentence and the hope he would live
to see his family again .

No seat was
available Monday when he boarded the bus in Lawrenceville, where the
prison is. So Whitfield stood for more than an hour, until the bus
reached Richmond.

Earlier
that day,
Commonwealth’s Attorney John R. Doyle III had asked the state Parole
Board for Whitfield’s immediate release after confirming the DNA test
results. Michael F. Fasanaro Jr., Whitfield’s attorney, said parole was
the quickest way to get Whitfield out of prison.

Fasanaro
said he soon will file papers asking that Whitfield be declared
innocent and his record cleared.

Compensation
for the
years he lost in prison has not yet entered his mind, Whitfield said. A
state law passed this year gives wrongfully imprisoned people the right
to seek compensation; Whitfield could also file a lawsuit.

The process
that led
to Whitfield’s release began last fall, when a fellow inmate encouraged
him to ask for DNA testing of evidence from his jury trial. That was
possible because in 2001, the General Assembly changed a state law that
restricted inmates’ ability to submit DNA evidence to prove their
innocence.

Whitfield
acted as
his own attorney to file the petition. Fasanaro was later appointed.
The evidence that exonerated Whitfield came from the files of Mary Jane
Burton, a state lab analyst whose habit of saving biological
samples
already has cleared at least two other men of rape charges. The
biological evidence that exonerated Whitfield points to another man as
the perpetrator. That man’s identity has not been released, but Doyle
said Monday that the suspect is serving life in prison for a 1984 rape
conviction.

Gordon
Zedd, the
attorney for Julius Earl Ruffin, one of the other men cleared, said
Tuesday that he plans to petition the state under the Freedom of
Information Act to open all Burton’s files to find the names of others
whose biological evidence she saved.

Doyle said
he has no
plans to ask for such an investigation of Burton’s files, nor to ask
the Norfolk Police Department to re-examine rape cases from that time
period. Unsolved cases are still open, he said, and sexual assault
investigators can still submit evidence in those cases.

Whitfield
knew
something was up when deputies from Norfolk came to the prison to take
additional DNA samples from him last week. But he still couldn’t
believe it when told he would be set free.

“I thought
it was
just a joke,” he said. Whitfield said he didn’t know what to do with
himself as he waited at the bus station in Lawrenceville.

“It’s been
a long time since I was out on my own,” he said.

He was
wearing the
same blue polo shirt, khaki pants and white sneakers the prison issued
to him for his ride home. They are all the clothes he has. He was 27
when he was imprisoned; he is now 49. His hair has grayed, but he still
wears the same thin beard he had more than 20 years ago. He spoke
quietly and calmly, surrounded by his mother, sister, niece and
grand-niece as well as his attorney.

His niece,
LaVon
Brown, met him at the bus station in Norfolk. She was about 5 when
Whitfield went to prison and 12 the last time she saw him. Now 28, she
had no trouble recognizing him.

“I never
forgot his face,” Brown said. “All I could do was smile. I just gave
him the biggest hug I could give.”

Whitfield
remembered taking her to the bus stop to go to kindergarten.

“I didn’t
recognize her at first, but she gave herself away by the smile,” he
said.

Once home,
Whitfield stayed up until 5 a.m. talking to his mother, Louise. He
slept for an hour before getting up again.

His father
is in the hospital and does not yet know that his son has been freed.

They have
not yet had a family meal together, Whitfield said. He did not feel
comfortable asking for something special.

“My family
became strangers to me, in a way,” Whitfield said.

He had a
girlfriend
back then, but the relationship has long since fallen apart.
Whitfield’s family testified for him during the trial. The night of the
rapes, he said, he was with his family at a next-door neighbor’s
birthday party.

“I thought
it would be enough to clear me at the time,” he said. “But it wasn’t.”

He worked
to avoid bitterness during the long years he spent in prison.

“If you’re
put in
that position, you have to make the best of it, do things to keep your
mind off what really has happened,” he said.

Whitfield
got his
general equivalency diploma while in prison and took vocational classes
in commercial cleaning and brick masonry. He began a computer
programming class, but his release kept him from finishing it.

Whitfield
had little
to say to the investigator who helped convict him, or to the two women
who at trial said they were sure he was the man who had raped them.

“It would
be nice for them to say they made a mistake,” he said. “It takes a big
person to say they made a mistake.”